We are the Birchwood Brothers—authentic siblings, senior citizens, dispensers of healing advice and spiritual counsel to the fantasy-impaired—back for our fifth year before the mast. Like those guys who spend their vacations in Trappist monasteries, each season around this time we bid our loved ones, and adult responsibility in general, a gleeful farewell, and immerse ourselves in fantasy baseball, seeking to apprehend and carry out the divine will, as it is expressed through the designation of players who, unforeseen by all but a few of the elect, will help a fantasy team succeed.

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It’s time to get nerdy. Very nerdy. While I’m going to post some auction values end the article’s end (I just lost 99% of the readers), the focus of the words is to concentrate on setting a pitcher-hitter split by just using Standings Gain Points (SGP). It’s not going to work with every league type. Not even close but it’s a theoretical solution which can help an owner the best chance to get the most value out of every draft pick or auction dollar. It’s definitely a better option when trying to set in-season values.

The following process is definitely ripe for discussion and argument. While writing The Process, Tanner and I debated this idea and even brought in others to determine if the pitcher-hitter split can be done by using SGP values. We published without including the concept as we were still ironing it out. We are still not in 100% agreement but here is the idea.

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Unless you plan on attempting to punt categories at your 2019 draft, at some point, one must acquire stolen bases. If you plan on completely ignoring the SB category – you can stop reading this article now. But for the rest of us, here is a look at where some potential bargains for speed may present itself in drafts.

For these draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from December 1, 2018 to present).

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It’s time to really get for the 2019 fantasy season and start and release out a set of hitter rankings to nitpick. In all fairness, some of the following projections need to be blown up. Normally, I just average several projections and use them for my fantasy values with great success. With a ‘wisdom of the crowd’ approach, I usually make sure one extreme value, high or low, doesn’t dominate my decision.

Some people get on me for just following these projections. Generally, I do follow them but just as a starting point. As I’ve shown this last week, I add in my own adjustments as I see fit into the baseline values. While Steamer has been out for a few months, other projections are now becoming available. Today, I just wanted to compare them to see who are some of the more divisive players.

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Step one, select Mike Trout.

I’m kidding. Finding a good value in the power department can be a challenge in the early rounds. Assuming you’re not picking at the very front of the draft, your options usually fall into one of two categories.

1. 15 to 30 home runs, 15 to 30 stolen bases
2. 40 or more home runs, no stolen bases

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The Indians, Rays and to everyone’s surprise, Mariners made a trade last week with the following final results:

• Rays get Yandy Diaz and Cole Sulser
• Mariners get Edwin Encarnacion, 77th pick, and $5M
• Indians get Jake Bauers, Carlos Santana, and $6M

For my analysis, I’m going to focus on just Diaz and Bauers. Both have shown great potential but their minor league results have not yet translated to the majors.

Yandy Diaz (NFBC ADP Rank: 475)

With Jason Kipnis and his $17M contract likely to play second and Jose Ramirez at third, Diaz wasn’t guaranteed to play in Clevland. He is now in Tampa.

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The Major League Rule 5 draft kicked off at noon today and finished a few minutes later. In typical rapid fire, 14 unprotected players were selected to go join new teams. Inevitably, some of them will be traded before the start of the season. Others will be returned to their original club.

The beauty of the Rule 5 draft is that the worst teams pick first. These are the clubs that are 1. most likely to keep their selection and 2. most likely to play their picks. You don’t find Odubel Herrera or Brad Keller by hiding them under the dankest corner of the bench. In fact, the 11 teams with the best record in 2018 made a total of zero selections. This likely reflects their intentions to continue competing at a high level – they don’t have the flexibility to nurse the types of players usually selected in the Rule 5 draft.

That said, a few of the 14 selected players could have a fantasy impact in 2019.

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The current fantasy focus is evaluating the top-100 or so players, especially the first couple rounds. I’m going to deep dive and investigate some later round values.  I will group 10 players together and pick which one I would take earlier than the others.

201: Arodys Vizcaino
202: Jonathan Schoop
203: Kevin Gausman
204: Luke Voit
205: Chris Taylor
206: Jake Arrieta
207: Forrest Whitley
208: Ross Stripling
209: Odubel Herrera
210: Yusei Kikuchi

There are several players I really like in this group like Taylor, Stripling, and Herrera but easily the best bargain is Kikuchi.

Kikuchi isn’t on par with Asian imports Ohtani or Darvish but he’s still extremely talented. He’s considered to be a better talent than Miles Mikolas and Mikolas is going 86th overall. I believe once Kikuchi signs and everyone gets to know him, his ADP will be cut in half and around a top-100 pick, if not double digits.
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Last week I wrote up the first 8 rounds of my NFBC draft from the Arizona Fall League and I did say rounds 9-23 would come on Wednesday… it is technically Wednesday so even though I clearly meant last Wednesday, let’s count it. It’s not like I didn’t write in the meantime, I did profiles on David Dahl (here), Harrison Bader (here), and Ronald Acuña Jr. (here), so feel free to check those out, too. At any rate, it’s time to finish up this draft recap so let’s roll!

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It’s rankings time so the comments are open for everyone to go batshit crazy about how a computer program and I are wrong.  We are both ready for everyone’s best shot as neither one of us gives a flying  f***.

As part of my soon to be released e-book, The Process, the Standing Gain Points formulas will be included for several league types. I took the one for The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, merge it with Steamer projections, and created some overall rankings.

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